The evidence on Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) in the first three years for disadvantaged children indicates that high-quality ECEC can produce benefits for cognitive, language, and social development. With regard to provision for subsequent years, disadvantaged children benefit particularly from high-quality preschool provision. Further, children benefit more in socially mixed groups.

Authors: Edward Melhulsh, Katharina Ereky-Stevens, Konstantinos Petroglannis, Anamaria Ariescu, Efthymia Penderi, Konstantina Rentzou, Alice Tawell, Pauline Slot, Martine Broekhuizen, & Paul Leseman

Source: Melhulsh, E., Ereky-Stevens, K., Petroglannis, K., Ariescu, A., Penderi, E., Rentzou, K., Tawell, A., Slot, P., Broekhuizen, M. & Leseman, P. (2015). CARE – Curriculum quality analysis and impact review of European Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC). https://ecec-care.org/fileadmin/careproject/Publications/reports/new_version_CARE_WP4_D4_1_Review_on_the_effects_of_ECEC.pdf

High-quality childcare has been associated with benefits for children’s development, with the strongest effects for children from disadvantaged backgrounds. However, negative effects can sometimes occur. Discrepant results may relate to age of starting and differences in the quality of childcare. The evidence on ECEC in the first three years for disadvantaged children indicates that high-quality ECEC can produce benefits for cognitive, language, and social development. With regard to provision for subsequent years, disadvantaged children benefit particularly from high-quality preschool provision. Further, children benefit more in socially mixed groups. This educational success is followed by increased success in employment, social integration, and reduced criminality in adulthood.

• The terms day care, child care, and ECEC have all been used to refer to various forms of non-parental childcare and early education occurring before school.
• ECEC has become a salient developmental context for most children in high-income countries and increasingly so in low- and middle-income countries.
• Quantity of care issues are concerned with whether child development is related to the following: a) the use of non-parental day care versus parental care (or the use of different types of care); b) the age at which children enter ECEC; and c) the amount of time children spend in ECEC.
• The structural quality of ECEC refers to the organisational and physical features of ECEC, and is generally considered higher when the following conditions are met: child group sizes and child-adult ratios are small, teachers are trained, and curriculum/ programme type, toys and learning materials, and physical space are age-appropriate and adequate.
• The process quality of ECEC refers to the quality of children’s daily experiences (including adult–child interactions) that foster children’s development.

Studies in USA

Early Head Start (EHS)

• EHS is a two-generation intervention programme serving parents and children from birth to age three.
• Centre-based programmes had the strongest effects on child outcomes, whereas home-based programmes had the strongest effects on parenting outcomes. Further, a mixed model combining both centre-based provision with home visiting had the most wide-ranging and strongest positive impact.
• Effect sizes were modest, generally in the range of 10% to 20%.

The positive effects for children

• Better cognitive and language development
• Better immunisation records and less hospitalisation
• Lower levels of aggressive behaviour
• More sustained play
• Greater engagement and less negativity with parents

The positive effects for parents

• Greater warmth and supportiveness toward children and less detachment
• More time playing with children
• More stimulating home environments
• More language learning and reading support for children
• Less corporal punishment and a wider range of discipline strategies
• A higher likeliness to be employed or in training
• Delayed subsequent child bearing compared to controls

Infant Health and Development Programme (IHDP)

• IHDP was an intervention aimed at improving the health and development of premature, low birth weight (LBW) (<2.5 kg) infants through a combination of education and support for parents plus enriched educational day care and health services for children.
• For children in the range 2.0–2.5 kg, there were large and significant benefits from the enriched educational day care intervention.
• For very LBW (<2 kg) infants, the results were more equivocal.
• There were modest short- and long-term improvements for cognitive outcomes for the heavier LBW participants.
• For non-cognitive outcomes, both short- and long-term effects on heavier LBW children were reported.

Milwaukee project

• The Milwaukee Project was an intervention programme designed to facilitate the intellectual development of very young disadvantaged children.
• The intervention technique employed an intensive educational programme for very young high-risk children, starting before the age of six months.
• The very small-scale intervention included a full-time, child-oriented, centre-based programme from infancy to six years of age with increasing educational input as age increased. Vocational training, childcare, and household guidance was also provided for mothers.
• By the age of six years, all the children from the experimental group had higher IQs compared to children from the control group.
• After leaving the programme, IQs started to decline and the scholastic achievement scores of the experimental group were the same as those of the control group.

Abecedarian Project

• The Abecedarian Project involved a poor African-American population in North Carolina.
• One group was placed in a programme involving centre-based care and home visits from the age of three months, which continued until the children entered school.
• The control group received family support, social services, low-cost (or free) pediatric care, and child nutritional supplements. However, there was no additional childcare beyond that provided by the parents and local services.
• Overall, there is a consistent positive message on the long-term impact of Abecedarian on cognitive and educational outcomes.
• Long-term effects for non-cognitive outcomes were found, such as reduced depression and delinquency and better employment.

Project CARE

• In this project, the effects of a centre-based programme, home visits, and control conditions were compared, with interventions starting shortly after birth. The target group was low-income African-American families.
• The day care plus home visit intervention group scored significantly higher on developmental assessments compared to the control and home visit only groups.
• Children in treatment groups that included childcare were rated as more task-oriented in infancy and tended to exhibit higher and more stable cognitive scores. This started during late infancy and continued through to early childhood.

Perry Preschool Project (PPP)

• This half-day, five days a week, centre-based programme started interventions at three years of age and was supplemented by weekly home visits lasting 90 min.
• African-American children with IQs <90 were randomly assigned to the intervention or control groups.
• The intervention involved a high-quality educationally-oriented curriculum with well-trained staff.
• The programme was demonstrated to have long-term effects.
• The intervention group exhibited higher levels of educational achievement.
• By the age of 27 years, the long-term benefits of the intervention included the following: reduced school drop-out, reduced drug use, reduced teenage pregnancies, enhanced employment, reduced welfare-dependence, and reduced crime.
• The long-term effect sizes were in the range 0.30–0.50 SD.

Early Training Project (ETP)

• Three to four year-old children were randomly assigned to treatment (44) and control (21) groups.
• Children were selected if they lived in poor or deteriorating housing or public housing, had a low family income, and had parents with a lower than high school education who were in an unskilled or semi-skilled occupation.
• The intervention consisted of a 10-week summer preschool programme for the 2–3 summers prior to the first grade, plus weekly home visits during the remainder of the year.
• There were positive modest effects, such as on high school completion.

Head Start

• Head Start is a broad-based federally funded (but locally administered) early intervention programme with the aim of improving outcomes for children in disadvantaged families.
• Typically, a Head Start programme would include centre-based early childcare and education from three years of age on at least a half-time basis.
• While Head Start had a substantial and immediate effect on participants, the long-term effects were less evident.

Child-Parent Centre (CPC)

• CPCs provide centre-based educational support and family support to disadvantaged children and their parents. This includes education, family, and health services and half-day preschool and school-age services up to the age of nine years.
• Children participated in the preschool intervention for one or two years. They achieved a higher rate of high school completion, more years of completed education, and lower rates of juvenile arrest, violent arrests, and school dropout.
• Children with two years of preschool experience had higher cognitive readiness and higher achievements in reading and mathematics at the age of five years compared to those with only one year of preschool.
• The short-term effects included moderate to high effect sizes, while long-term effects (both cognitive and behavioural) were small to moderate.

Great Start Readiness Programme

• This is a state-funded preschool initiative.
• To qualify for the programme, a child must be four years of age and have at least 2 of 25 risk factors (such as living in a low-income or single parent family).
• Children receive a child developmental preschool programme that provides age-appropriate activities to promote their intellectual and social growth and school readiness.
• Children’s families receive parenting support, guidance, and referrals to community services as required.
• Children who attended the programme were more advanced in six areas of child development compared to the control group: initiative, social relations, creative representation, music and movement, language and literacy, and logic and mathematics.
• In grade four, students who had attended the programme had a significantly higher percentage of satisfactory scores on academic performance.
• Students who participated in the programme demonstrated improved levels of on-time school graduation, lower retention in grade, higher performance in mathematics and in mathematics and language arts combined in high-school.

Texas Targeted Pre-Kindergarten Programme

• The purpose of state-sponsored Pre-Kindergarten (pre-K) in Texas is to bolster the academic performance of at-risk children.
• The Texas programme ranks low in quality in terms of class size, staff to pupil ratios, and spending per capita.
• For the 3^rd grade reading test there were statistically significant effects for public pre-K attendance.
• Attendance to public pre-K significantly reduced the probability of retention in grade.
• The likelihood of being assigned to special education in the third grade was lower for pre-K children.

Syracuse Family Development Research Programme

• This was a comprehensive childcare, education, health and family support programme from pregnancy to the start of school designed to improve child and family functioning through home visitations, parental training, and individualised day care.
• The programme targeted young, African-American, single-parent, low-income families.
• Child Development Trainers visited each family weekly where they focused on increasing family interaction, cohesiveness, and nurturing.
• In the Children’s Centre (for day care), infants were assigned to a caregiver for attention, cognitive and social games, sensorimotor activities, and language stimulation.
• Compared with a control group, the intervention produced better educational attainment and school attendance for girls, but not for boys.
• In adolescence, there were improvements in social adjustment and reduced criminality of the intervention group.

European studies

UK

• The Hackney Day Care Study proposed to assess the effects of providing day care to children aged six months to three-and-a-half years from socially disadvantaged families.
• While there was an increase in the likelihood of mothers in the intervention group being in paid employment, there was no increase in family income.
• Children in the intervention group were more likely to be infected with ‘glue ear’ (otitis media with effusion)
• No child development effects or positive cost benefits were found.

Denmark

• The Action Competencies in Social Pedagogical Work with Socially Endangered Child and Youth (ASP-program) aims to improve the wellbeing and cognitive functioning of all children.
• The intervention appears to have had a positive and growing effect on emotional symptoms, conduct problems, and hyperactivity inattention. However, there was no effect on peer relationships and pro-social behaviour.

Germany

• The Socio-economic Panel (SOEP) is a longitudinal survey of private households in a wide-ranging representative study with annual follow-ups.
• Children from advantaged families derived lower returns to childcare attendance than children from a less advantaged family backgrounds.
• Children who would benefit the most—younger children and children from disadvantaged backgrounds—are least likely to be sent to childcare.
• Children who are the least likely to enter childcare gained more from attending childcare in terms of social, language, daily, and motor skills than children who face lower unobserved entry barriers.

Netherlands

• Several early education and care programmes were researched in the Dutch Cohort Study of Primary Education (PRIMA).
• The common aim of these programmes was to stimulate socio-emotional and cognitive development.
• Their curriculum is predominantly developmental. Most preschools work with mixed-age groups and most time is spent in free-play activities and work lessons with small groups of children.
• Whole group activities are regularly provided as starter, break, or closing activities during the day and include book reading, play, talking, and singing.
• In the second year of preschool, existing activities are complemented by literacy and mathematics activities (such as exploring letters and words, counting, and measuring)
• Using retrospective analysis, no statistically significant effects of targeted preschool education were found on language and cognitive outcomes and school achievement.
• Using a cohort-sequential augmented latent growth analysis, a study showed positive effects of teacher-initiated language, literacy, and mathematics activities on children’s growth in these skills over time.

France

• The French kindergarten (ecole maternelle) is available to all children aged from three to six years and has an explicit educational mission, although this does not necessarily focus on the promotion of pre-academic skills.
• A study reported a stronger effect of an earlier start in ecole maternelle (age two compared to age three) on early school skills and grade retention in primary school, especially for children of low-income and immigrant ethnic minority families.

Summary of evidence for disadvantaged children

• The evidence on childcare in the first three years for disadvantaged children indicates that high-quality ECEC can benefit cognitive, language, and social development.
• With regard to provision for three years onwards, disadvantaged children benefit particularly from high-quality preschool provision.
• Children benefit more in socially mixed groups.

ECEC for children up to three years of age in the general population

Socio-emotional development

• Two meta-analyses conducted in the 1980s summarised many US studies and concluded that non-maternal care in the first years of life could increase the likelihood of insecure attachment with the mother.
• Daycare may compromise attachment security, but only in instances of poor quality infant care either at home and/or in daycare.
• A study found that children who started childcare aged 6–12 months and 18–23 months were more prone to frustration and had difficulty reuniting with their mothers. In contrast, children who started when aged 12–17 months displayed lower levels of relational distress.
• Infants and toddlers who are securely attached to their primary caregivers may find experiencing and settling into day care less stressful. Importantly, attachment security to the parent was related to the time spent by children adapting to daycare—if more time was spent, attachment remained or became secure.
• Caregivers showing high levels of sensitive responsiveness were more likely to have children securely attached to them.
• Quantity of group care, particularly where there is an early age of entry and high hourly amounts, have been associated with somewhat elevated levels of externalising behaviour problems.
• High-quality childcare can partially compensate for the negative behavioural effects of high quantity childcare, and the effects on externalising behaviour seem to disappear during elementary school.
• Some studies have reported mixed findings related to externalising behaviours.

Cognitive, language, and educational development

• Overall, the studies in this review suggest positive effects of ECEC attendance under the age of three years with regard to children’s cognitive and language development and academic achievement.
• The positive effect of ECEC seems particularly true for attendance in centre-based care and for children starting to attend ECEC settings between the ages of two to three years.
• In the Brookline Early Education Project (BEEP), children receiving intervention scored higher and demonstrated fewer difficulties in social development and learning skills compared to children from the same classrooms and similar family backgrounds in the control group (without intervention). This was true for children in both kindergarten and third grade. As young adults, the intervention group reported higher incomes, less depression, better employment, better health, and less risk-taking behaviour compared to the control group.
• In some other studies, longitudinal benefits were not identified.

ECEC for children aged over three years in the general population

Socio-emotional development

• The effect of ECEC on socio-emotional development has been small.

Cognitive, language, and educational development

• Findings on the relationships between attendance or amount of ECEC and children’s cognitive, language, and academic outcomes are more conclusive for over-threes in ECEC.
• ECEC participation boosts cognitive development, school readiness skills, and school achievement.
• Findings overall suggest that investing in universally available good quality ECEC can bring benefits to governments, children, families, and communities.

Implications

• While the research on preschool education (over three years) is fairly consistent, research evidence on the effects of childcare (zero to three years) upon development has been equivocal, with some studies finding negative effects, some no effects, and some positive effects.
• Discrepant results may relate to the age of starting and possibly to differences in the quality of childcare received by children.
• Research indicates that high-quality ECEC can produce benefits for cognitive, language, and social development for disadvantaged children.
• Research indicates that the following quality characteristics of Early Years provision are important for enhancing children’s development:
  • Adult-child interaction that is responsive, affectionate, and readily available
  • Well-trained staff who are committed to their work with children
  • A developmentally appropriate curriculum with educational content
  • Ratios and group sizes that allow staff to interact appropriately with children
  • Supervision that maintains consistency in the quality of care
  • Staff development that ensures continuity, stability, and improving quality
  • Facilities that are safe, sanitary, and accessible to parents

The Executive Functions (EFs) of inhibitory control, working memory, and cognitive flexibility enable us to think before we act, resist temptations or impulsive reactions, remain focused, reason, problem-solve, flexibly adjust to changed demands or priorities, and see things from new and different perspectives. Further, it is now clear that they can be improved at any age through training and practice. We predict that in addition to training EFs directly, the most successful approaches for improving EFs will also address emotional, social, and physical needs.

Authors: Adele Diamond & Daphne S. Ling

Source: Diamond, A. & Ling, D.S. (2016). Conclusions about interventions, programs, and approaches for improving executive functions that appear justified and those that, despite much hype, do not. Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience, 18, 34-48, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.dcn.2015.11.005

The Executive Functions (EFs) of inhibitory control, working memory, and cognitive flexibility enable us to think before we act, resist temptations or impulsive reactions, remain focused, reason, problem-solve, flexibly adjust to changed demands or priorities, and see things from new and different perspectives. Moreover, it is now clear that they can be improved at any age through training and practice. However, despite claims to the contrary, wide transfer does not seem to occur and ‘mindless’ aerobic exercise does little to improve Efs. Since stress, sadness, loneliness, or poor health impair Efs (and the reverse enhances EFs), we predict in addition to training EFs directly, the most successful approaches for improving EFs will also address emotional, social, and physical needs.

• There has been great interest in improving EFs, accelerating their development, stopping or slowing their decline, and/or remediating deficits.
• Many different methods have been tried to improve EFs, including diverse types of computerised cognitive training, diverse physical activities as well as other things such as certain school curricula.
• EFs are predictive of achievement, health, wealth, and quality of life throughout life, often more so than IQ or socioeconomic status.

Interventions, programmes, and approaches for improving EFs

• 84 studies met the inclusion criteria.
• Many different activities have at least one peer-reviewed published report on their efficacy in improving executive functions. These include computerised training, games, aerobics, resistance training, martial arts, yoga, mindfulness, theatre, and certain school curricula.

A different perspective based on the neurobiology of EFs and prefrontal cortex

• EFs depend on the prefrontal cortex and other neural regions with which it is interconnected.
• The prefrontal cortex is the newest and most vulnerable area of the brain.
• Since stress, sadness, loneliness, and poor health impair EFs. Accordingly, we predict the most successful approaches for improving EFs will directly train and challenge EFs while indirectly supporting EFs by working to reduce things that impair them and enhance things that support them.
• The main reason stress impairs EFs is because even mild stress overwhelms the prefrontal cortex with excess dopamine.
• The adrenal cortex releases cortisol in response to stress, which can disrupt functional connectivity between the prefrontal cortex and other brain regions.
• People exhibit improved cognitive flexibility and creativity when they are happy.
• Our EFs suffer when we are lonely, whereas we exhibit improved EFs when we feel socially supported. Accordingly, feeling excluded or not belonging impairs prefrontal cortex functioning, selective attention, and reasoning.
• Lack of sleep impairs EFs.
• When people are infected, their prefrontal cortex does not function as well and executive functioning is of poorer quality.
• Feeling confident in your ability to succeed, believing that through effort you can improve, treating errors and failed attempts as learning opportunities (or what happens when you push past your comfort zone), and venturing beyond what you already know are important attributes for succeeding at many things. It is predicted this may also apply for improving EFs.

This study reintroduces a wide-angled view of reading comprehension and the Reading Systems Framework, which places word knowledge in the centre of the picture. Within this framework, word-to-text integration processes can serve as a model for the study of local comprehension processes. Studies of these processes allows the influence of one sentence on the reading of a single word in a second sentence to be examined, which enables the integration of the word meaning into the reader’s mental model of the text.

Authors: Charles Perfetti & Joseph Stafura

Source: Perfetti, C. & Stafura, J. (2014). Word knowledge in a theory of reading comprehension. Scientific Studies of Reading, 18(1), 22-37, DOI: 10.1080/10888438.2013.827687

This study reintroduces a wide-angle view of reading comprehension and the Reading Systems Framework, which places word knowledge in the centre of the picture. Within this framework, word-to-text integration processes can serve as a model for the study of local comprehension processes. These processes require a linkage between the word identification system and the comprehension system, with lexicon performing the linking role. Studies of these processes allows examining the influence of one sentence on the reading of a single word in a second sentence, which enables the integration of the word meaning into the reader’s mental model of the text. Skilled comprehenders show immediate use of word meanings in the integration process.

• This modern study of reading comprehension was propelled by two complementary ideas: an enriched level of comprehension beyond the literal meaning of a text (the reader’s situation model) and the cognitive dynamics of text comprehension (the construction-integration (C-I) model).
• An important benefit of the C-I model was demonstrating that text comprehension could be explained by an interactive combination of top-down (knowledge-driven) and bottom-up (word-based) processes.

A neurobiological model of language processing

• Hagoort (2005) asserted that memory, unification, and control operations are the functional core of a processing system that emerges from a distributed network of subsystems.
• When a reader encounters a word, input from the visual orthographic system drives operations in the temporal lobes to retrieve associated linguistic and general knowledge from long-term memory.
• Unification computation in the left inferior frontal gyrus integrates the word-level syntactic and semantic knowledge into the ongoing context.
• Limitations in cognitive resources are managed through the application of control operations in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and anterior cingulate.

Knowledge of word meanings is instrumental in reading comprehension

• The Lexical Quality Hypothesis assumes that word knowledge (both form and meaning) is central to reading skill.
• High-quality form knowledge includes phonological specificity and orthographic precision.
• The semantic constituent of lexical quality is closely connected to comprehension, as established by correlations between vocabulary and reading comprehension.
• Accounting for word meaning knowledge as part of reading challenges the assumption that decoding a word unlocks all the knowledge associated with the spoken word.
• The Simple View of Reading would need to accommodate the direct effects of vocabulary on reading comprehension by allowing vocabulary knowledge to influence decoding.
• Word meaning would contribute to reading as a component of language comprehension and through word reading.
• A second aspect of the word knowledge-comprehension connection concerns learning new words.
• During reading, readers implicitly infer meanings from imperfectly understood text, allowing the establishment of a new (or refinement of an existing) lexical entry.

In this experimental study, 16 sixth-grade classes (N = 236) were randomly assigned to either experimental or control conditions. In the experimental condition, student contributions to ‘gap-filling’ inferences with expository texts were made explicit by means of graphic models and inference-demanding questions. After 8 sessions of 30 min each, a large training effect was found on student inference-making skills with a substantial and sustained transfer effect to a standard measure of reading comprehension.

Authors: Carsten Elbro & Ida Buch-Iversen

Source: Elbro, C. & Buch-Iversen, I. (2013). Activation of background knowledge for inference making: Effects on reading comprehension. Scientific Studies of Reading, 17(6), 435-452. DOI: 10.1080/10888438.2013.774005

Failure to activate relevant, existing, background knowledge may be a cause of poor reading comprehension. This failure can result in particular problems with inferences that depend heavily on prior knowledge. In this experimental study, 16 sixth-grade classes (N = 236) were randomly assigned to either experimental or control conditions. In the experimental condition, student contributions to ‘gap-filling’ inferences with expository texts were made explicit through graphic models and inference-demanding questions. After 8 sessions of 30 min each, a large training effect was found on student inference-making skills with a substantial and sustained transfer effect to a standard measure of reading comprehension.

• Texts cannot be understood without contributions from readers.
• Texts provide instructions to readers about how to use relevant knowledge and experience to build an understanding of the text.
• Building an understanding depends heavily on the reader’s ability to draw inferences.
• In some cases, the reader does not have the knowledge necessary to form the inferences required to comprehend a text.
• Ability to make inferences can contribute to reading comprehension, even when other abilities and knowledge are controlled (such as decoding, vocabulary, awareness of text structure, comprehension monitoring, and verbal IQ).
• Most experimental studies have aimed broadly to encourage students to reflect about texts. Further, inference making has not been taught or studied exclusively, but only as a part of a broader training programme.
• The present study focused exclusively on inferences during reading that require integration of background knowledge with information from the text to form a coherent representation of the meaning.
• The current study focused specifically on inferences that are both dependent on prior knowledge and crucial for maintaining global coherence in text comprehension.
• Identified inferences are termed ‘gap-filling’ inferences.
• To elucidate the contributions from reader knowledge, graphic models were employed in a questioning format.

The present study

In the present study, Grade 6 students (aged 11 years) were selected because they face an increasing number of expository texts from which they are expected to acquire new knowledge. The study focused exclusively on knowledge-demanding and gap-filling inferences for two reasons: they are necessary for building a coherent representation of texts and they may work as an ideal showcase for the use of background knowledge.

Research questions:

1. Does such focused training generalise across texts to similar inferences in untrained texts with no prompts to activate background knowledge?
2. Do primary training effects generalise to reading comprehension more broadly when measured with a standard test of reading comprehension and is the effect sustained?
3. Can the possible effects be mediated by student abilities prior to training?

The present data

In this study, 16 sixth-grade classes were randomly assigned to either an experimental or a control condition. The class teachers provided voluntary participation. The experimental condition consisted of 10 classes, while the control condition comprised 6 classes (from 2 schools). In the experimental condition, eight lessons in knowledge-based inference making replaced a similar amount of teaching of mother-tongue language and literature, whereas the control group received ordinary teaching.

The inference-training programme

• The materials for the eight training sessions consisted of short expository texts and questions that required students to make gap-filling inferences.
• In the first session, students were introduced to the programme using a mix of short narrative and expository passages (typically 2–4 sentences). After each passage, a comprehension question was asked that required students to supply background knowledge to draw simple inferences.
• In each of the subsequent 7 sessions, students read 2 or 3 short texts of 100–200 words and answered relevant inference-demanding questions.
• The training programme comprised 15 texts of expository prose written for the programme.
• Text topics were selected from biology, geography, technology, sociology, and history.
• In Sessions 2–6, all texts were supported by graphic organisers.
• The organisers had empty boxes into which the students were asked to place relevant pieces of information stated in the text or supplied from their background knowledge.
• In the final 2 sessions, students read the same kind of texts and answered knowledge-demanding inference questions about them but without the support of graphic organisers.
• All teaching in the experimental programme was provided by the ordinary class teachers during 8 sessions of approximately 30 min each.
• At the beginning of each session, teachers presented the students with an overview of the session and explained any difficult words in the texts.
• The control group did not see any of the experimental materials and were taught ordinary mother language lessons according to national guidelines.
• All participating teachers were given a brief introduction to the aims and plan of the study.
• After teachers and classes had been randomly assigned to the experimental or the control condition, teachers in the experimental condition received a 1 hr introduction to the experimental programme.
• During the introduction, teachers were provided with all the teaching materials. This included all the student worksheets and a written step-by-step teaching manual that explained the goals and procedures of each training session.

Summary

• It was possible to help 11-year-old students to improve their ability to make gap-filling inferences in a short programme of eight lessons that focused on the contribution of readers’ background knowledge to text comprehension. The training effect remained large when initial abilities in word decoding, receptive vocabulary, and verbal IQ were controlled.
• Training was also associated with a significant advance in general reading comprehension (fiction and nonfiction) and for both literal and nonliteral questions. The effect was sustained for five weeks after termination of the experimental teaching.
• The effects of the experimental training were found to be robust and independent of student characteristics and abilities assessed prior to participation in the experimental programme (gender, vocabulary, decoding fluency, and nonverbal IQ).

Data from 101 mother/father/child triads were used to consider the extent to which associations between home literacy and children’s reading fluency could be accounted for by parental reading fluency. Although home literacy correlated significantly with children’s reading, no variable predicted significant variance after allowing for parental reading, except the number of books in the home.

Authors: Elsje van Bergen, Titia van Zuijen, Dorothy Bishop & Peter F. de Jong

Source: Van Bergen, E., van Zuijen, T., Bishop, D. & de Jong, P.F. (2016). Why are home literacy environment and children’s reading skills associated? What parental skills reveal. Reading Research Quarterly, 52(2), 147–160, DOI: 10.1002/rrq.160

Associations between the home literacy environment and children’s reading ability are often assumed to reflect a direct influence. However, heritability could account for the association between parent and child literacy-related measures. Data from 101 mother/father/child triads were used to consider the extent to which associations between home literacy and children’s reading fluency could be accounted for by parental reading fluency. Although home literacy correlated significantly with children’s reading, no variable predicted significant variance after allowing for parental reading, except the number of books in the home.

• Children’s word-reading accuracy and fluency (i.e. decoding) is linked to aspects of the family environment that children grow up in, including parents’ educational attainment, how often parents read themselves and to their children and the availability of reading material.
• Individual differences in reading are due to both environmental and genetic influences, with a substantial heritability of about 70%.
• Therefore, the association between home literacy and children’s reading ability may well be explained (at least partly) by a third variable: genes shared by parents and offspring.
• The relationship between home literacy and child outcome might reflect a passive gene-environment correlation.
• According to the intergenerational multiple deficit model, the reading skills of the parents can be treated as an indicator of familial effect, which is a combination of the genetic and environmental influences transmitted from parent to child.
• It is reasoned that if an environmental measure is still significantly associated with children’s reading after controlling for parental reading, the environmental measure exerts an effect on children’s reading that is partly independent of the familial effect.
• Thus, an environmental measure exerts a true environmental effect (i.e. cultural transmission), rather than just a masked genetic effect (i.e. gene-environment correlation).
• It is important to identify variables that represent a true environmental effect as those are the variables that we can potentially manipulate to improve children’s achievement.

The study

The present study examines reading fluency in a sample of children and their parents. The focus was on decoding skills because they form the basis for reading comprehension skills, and a decoding deficit is the primary criterion for dyslexia. As measures of the family environment, parental education and home literacy were studied. As indicators of home literacy, parents’ print exposure and the availability of magazines, newspapers and books in the home were used.

Research question

1. Does the family environment predict children’s reading fluency after controlling for the reading fluency of both parents?

The data consisted of 101 Dutch mother/father/child families of which both (biological) parents and at least one child took part. The mean age of the children was 10.92 years old.

Implications

• Parental education and parental reading frequency did not predict children’s reading fluency over and above parental reading fluency. That is, the reason why these aspects of the home environment were connected with children’s reading seemed to be because parents with good reading skills tend to have children with good reading abilities, as well as high educational attainment and highly literate homes.
• The strongest correlate of child reading appeared to be the number of books in the home, which predicted child reading over and above parental reading fluency.
• Two qualifications should be noticed when considering the conclusion that parent-offspring resemblance only seems to reflect genetic transmission. First, this does not imply that parental behaviour makes no difference; it would only mean that growing up with caretakers of a certain reading level is not a risk or protective factor. Second, this conclusion pertains to parent-offspring resemblance, whether that is due to genetic or environmental transmission.
• It is possible that those with a family risk may benefit from a qualitatively different approach to reading instruction, rather than just increased quantity. For instance, it may be beneficial to control the timing of instruction and support to ensure that the child has underlying phonological skills firmly in place before introducing written language.
• The number of books in the home seems to have a genuine environmental effect.
• The key question here would be whether merely providing families with more books would enhance children’s reading. From an educational viewpoint, it makes more sense to try to boost reading by providing books and encouraging families to engage in family literacy practices, such as shared reading and/or the direct tutoring of decoding.
• Correlations between children’s reading fluency and other measures of home literacy could all be accounted for in terms of passive gene-environment correlations.
• It is possible that causal environmental effects might be observed with a larger sample and/or different methods.

This study examined how home literacy environments might relate to rural kindergarten and first grade students’ reading performance. Home literacy activities and access to literacy materials were positively related to basic word reading skills, passage comprehension and spelling.

Authors: Ariel Tichnor-Wagner, Justin D. Garwood, Mary Bratsch-Hines & Lynne Vernon-Feagans

Source: Tichnor-Wagner, A., Garwood, J.D., Bratsch-Hines, M. & Vernon-Feagans, L. (2015). Home literacy environments and foundational literacy skills for struggling and nonstruggling readers in rural early elementary schools. Learning Disabilities Research & Practice, 31(1), 6–21, DOI: 10.1111/ldrp.12090

Factors such as weak early literacy skills and living in poverty may put young students at risk of reading disabilities. This study examined how home literacy environments might relate to rural kindergarten and first grade students’ reading performance. Parents of 1,108 kindergarten and first grade students in the rural Southeast United States completed questionnaires on the frequency of home literacy activities and access to literacy materials. Home literacy activities and access to literacy materials were positively related to basic word reading skills, passage comprehension and spelling.

• Research has found that factors such as weak early literacy skills and living in poverty may put young students at risk of reading disabilities.
• Good early reading instruction by classroom teachers in early elementary schools can be critical to helping many children learn how to read.
• Whitehurst and Lonigan (1998) conceptualised foundational reading skills that affect children’s later reading development in terms of two domains: 1) outside-in skills associated with reading comprehension, such as language, vocabulary, content and narrative understanding; and 2) inside-out skills focused on symbol/sound correspondences within words, such as word decoding, the alphabetic principle and phonemic awareness.
• Children’s home literacy environments have been found to influence both outside-in and inside-out language and literacy skills associated with later reading success.
• Poverty is the best predictor of children’s academic performance in school, including literacy development, and has been associated with weaker reading readiness in kindergarten and first grade.
• Rural children are exposed to many reading risk factors associated with geographic isolation, including limited access to libraries and other educational resources, the lower availability of high-quality preschool education and teachers who have fewer professional development opportunities, including less access to advanced degrees.

The study

In the current study, the types and frequency of literacy-related activities in the homes of rural kindergarten and first grade students were investigated, as well as the extent to which home literacy activities and access to literacy materials contributed to children’s outside-in and inside-out literacy skills.

Research questions

1. To what extent do rural families with children in kindergarten and first grade engage in literacy activities in their homes? Do differences exist between children who were identified as struggling and nonstruggling readers?
2. How do home literacy activities and access to literacy materials uniquely contribute to the basic word reading, reading comprehension and spelling scores of all students at the beginning of kindergarten or first grade, after controlling for demographic characteristics?

The data used in this study were drawn from a randomized controlled trial (RCT) prior to intervention implementation. The targeted reading intervention (TRI) was developed to help kindergarten and first grade struggling readers and their teachers in rural low-wealth schools by providing teachers with a weekly literacy coach, who used webcam technology to watch the teachers work with struggling readers and to give them real time feedback. Reading achievement data were available for 1,108 students (556 were struggling readers and 552 were nonstruggling readers).

Implications

• The results from the current study showed that rural families participated in a variety of literacy activities with their kindergarten and first grade children, and this was positively associated with outside-in (i.e. passage comprehension) and inside-out (i.e. letter identification, phonetic spelling) skills.
• Home literacy activities frequently took place in this sample of rural families.
• Considering that over half of the sample came from families with an annual income of less than $20,000, these findings combat negative stereotypes that cast low-income parents as being uninvolved with helping their children succeed in school.
• Rural kindergarten and first grade students had less access to print or digital reading materials when compared to national samples.
• Educators can provide parents with information to help children develop early literacy skills, including tips for how to help children with homework and engage their children in supplemental literacy activities.
• Teachers, for example, can provide details for parents on how to conduct storybook reading in ways that are aligned with school practices and that help build important early literacy skills (e.g. questions to ask to build comprehension, ways of pointing out aspects of the text to build print awareness, modelling fluency).
• Schools can ensure that they provide literacy resources to families with limited access; schools are an important avenue for providing access to computers and books.

Over two decades of Finnish research, children born with a risk of dyslexia were monitored in the Jyväskylä Longitudinal Study of Dyslexia (JLD). In total, 200 children, half of whom were considered to be at risk, were assessed from birth to puberty using hundreds of measures. The aims were to identify measures for predicting later reading difficulty and to instigate appropriate and early diagnosis and intervention.

Authors: Heikki Lyytinen, Jane Erskine, Jarmo Hämäläinen, Minna Torppa & Miia Ronimus

Source: Lyytinen, H., Erskine, J., Hämäläinen, J., Torppa, M. & Ronimus, M. (2015). Dyslexia – Early identification and prevention: Highlights from the Jyväskylä Longitudinal Study of Dyslexia. Curr Dev Disord Rep, 2, 330–338, DOI: 10.1007/s40474-015-0067-1

Over two decades of Finnish research, children born with a risk of dyslexia were monitored in the Jyväskylä Longitudinal Study of Dyslexia (JLD). In total, 200 children, half of whom were considered to be at risk, were assessed from birth to puberty using hundreds of measures. The aims were to identify measures for predicting later reading difficulty and to instigate appropriate and early diagnosis and intervention. At-risk children can be identified from newborn electroencephalographic brain recordings. The earliest easy-to-use predictive measure to identify children who need help in learning to read is letter knowledge. In response, a purpose-engineered computer game, GraphoGame (GG), provides an effective intervention tool. In doubling as a research instrument, GG provides bespoke intervention/reading instruction for typically/atypically developing children. GG is now crossing the developed and developing world to assist children, irrespective of the cause of their failing to learn to read.

• Since 1993, the JLD has followed, longitudinally from birth, a cohort of 200 Finnish children, half of whom are at familial risk of dyslexia.
• From the antenatal clinic to their upper school years, the JLD children have been assessed on a plethora of neuropsychological, neurophysiological, cognitive, behavioural and observational indices.
• By comparing the JLD children’s early developmental measures with their current developmental statuses, it is now possible to demonstrate those indices that are the most salient predictors of later difficulty in reading skills.
• This also allows a programme of intervention to target these salient areas of difficulty at the earliest possible time, using a remediation-based technology, GraphoGame (GG), which has been developed alongside the JLD study.

The impact of orthographic transparency

• Among alphabetic orthographies, Finnish is one of the most transparent.
• The transparency of a writing system refers to the consistency of links between sounds or phonemes in speech and the graphemes (letters, letter clusters) that represent them in text.
• Finnish children start school in August of the year that they turn seven years old.
• By this time, 45% can read, and the majority are at least familiar with most letter names.
• After a few months in school, most children can decode words and also pseudowords, because letter-by-letter decoding is not affected by the meaning of the word and differs from how decoding works, for example, in English.
• The disparity in the learning burden as a function of the transparency of the language is marked.
• Finnish children must learn to master the sounds of fewer than 30 letters/graphemes, and these can be relied upon to be perfectly consistent in their sound/written representation.
• In contrast, the much heavier burden of English, with its many-on-one permutations in the journey from sound to speech and back to sound, means that a child must master numerous context-dependent permutations from the outset.
• Due to the lighter burden of learning to decode accurately, dyslexia in transparent orthographies is typically characterised by difficulties with the fluency of decoding, rather than with simple accuracy.
• One of the few complexities of Finnish is that an audible increase in the duration of the phoneme in the pronunciation is marked by repeated or double letters – in short, the manipulation of phonemic length or quantity.
• This feature has been recognised as one key area of difficulty for the Finnish dyslexic, particularly in terms of spelling.

GraphoGame

• GraphoGame (GG) is a digital learning environment that has been developed to support at-risk children’s reading acquisition.
• The learning game, also comprising the training of basic mathematics skills, is used in schools and homes across Finland on a daily basis by thousands of children.
• Besides being an educational tool, GG is also a research instrument as it saves player logs, which can be used to analyse the learning processes of the players.
• In the game, the player hears a sound and matches it with the appropriate letter.
• The unique adaptive nature of the software ensures that the content of each trial is determined by the player’s performance in the previous trials, providing an optimal challenge level for each individual player.
• After the basic decoding skill is achieved, the training can continue with the fluency version of GG, which focuses on improving children’s reading speed by providing training in syllable recognition and the reading of sentences and longer texts.
• It is recommended that children who are at risk of reading difficulty and who will ultimately require more practice than their peers start to train with GG just before the beginning of formal schooling.

Conclusions

• The typical reader of transparent writing is able to quickly grasp the simple relationship between letters and sounds and assemble and manipulate these to form the words of the language and progress, with prolific reading and literacy experience, toward fluent reading with comprehension.
• Difficulty with the discrimination of complexity, such as phonemic length in Finnish, may hinder competence in letter-sound acquisition.
• Reading that lacks fluency is disrupted in nature and can never therefore become fully automatic.
• Unless automaticity is achieved, comprehension can never be fully achieved due to working memory limitations.
• It is therefore important for interventions to interrupt this potential impasse by quickly shifting the learner’s attention away from letter-sound drilling toward larger units.
• It should be acknowledged that there are a plethora of speech and language measures (e.g. phonological awareness (PA), rapid naming, the family literacy environment) that exert an influence on a child’s later difficulties.
• However, what is suggested is that close attention should be paid to those children who display delayed language and/or who may not be grasping the letters of the alphabet in line with expected developmental milestones.
• In the earlier years, the content of interventions could involve introductions to more meaningful larger units in whole word form. This would help stimulate an awareness of orthography and the accumulation of vocabulary.
• Once sufficient cognitive maturity is reached at school entry, learners may progress to the manipulation of the smaller most consistent units that are dependent on orthography in order to foster the precursors of reading acquisition.

A substantial proportion of children struggle to learn to read. This not only impairs their academic achievement but also increases their risk of social, emotional and mental health problems. The aim of this study is to outline some of the things that we have learned so far and to provide a framework for considering the causes of reading difficulties and the most effective ways to treat them.

Authors: Genevieve McArthur & Anne Castles

Source: McArthur, G. & Castles, A. (2017). Helping children with reading difficulties: Some things we have learned so far. NPJ Science of Learning, 2(7), DOI: 10.1038/s41539-017-0008-3

A substantial proportion of children struggle to learn to read. This not only impairs their academic achievement but also increases their risk of social, emotional and mental health problems. The aim of this study is to outline some of the things that we have learned so far and to provide a framework for considering the causes of reading difficulties and the most effective ways to treat them.

• Sixteen per cent of children struggle to learn to read to some extent, and five per cent of children have significant, severe and persistent problems.
• Poor reading is associated with an increased risk of school dropout, attempted suicide, incarceration, anxiety, depression and low self-concept.

Reading behaviours have different ‘proximal’ causes

• A proximal cause of a reading behaviour can be defined as a component of the cognitive system that directly and immediately produces that reading behaviour.
• Most reading behaviours will have more than one proximal cause.
• There are several theoretical and computational models of reading, which vary in some respects, but all include cognitive components that represent

1. the ability to recognise letters, letter clusters and written words;
2. the ability to recognise and produce speech sounds and spoken words;
3. the ability to access stored knowledge about the meanings of words and
4. links between these various components.

Reading behaviours have different ‘distal’ causes

• A distal cause has a distant, that is, an indirect or delayed, impact on a reading behaviour.
• Distal causes reflect the fact that reading is a taught skill that unfolds over time and through development.
• It depends upon a range of more cognitive abilities, such as memory, attention and language skills.
• Thus, there can be different causal pathways to the same impairment of the reading system.

Proximal intervention is more effective than distal intervention

• Randomised controlled trials (RCTs) are the gold standard method for assessing a treatment of any kind. Unfortunately, few interventions for reading difficulties have been tested with an RCT.
• Intervention can be divided into ‘proximal interventions’, which focus training on the proximal causes of a reading behaviour that are proposed to be part of the cognitive system for reading, and ‘distal interventions’, which focus on the distal causes of a reading behaviour.
• Only phonics training, which focuses on improving a proximal cause of poor reading (i.e. letter-sound mappings), has been shown to produce a statistically reliable effect.
• The ‘closer’ the intervention is to an impaired reading behaviour, the more likely it is to be effective.

Translating what we know (thus far) into evidence-based practice

• First, the fact that poor readers vary in the nature of their reading behaviours suggests that the first step in identifying an effective intervention for a poor reader is to assess different aspects of reading.
• Second, the fact that poor readers’ reading behaviours can have different proximal causes suggests that the next step is to test them for the potential proximal causes of their poor reading behaviours.
• Third, the fact that poor readers vary in the degree to which they experience comorbid cognitive and emotional impairments suggests that it would be useful to assess poor readers for their spoken language abilities, attention, anxiety, depression and self-concept, at the very least.
• Once a poor reader’s reading behaviours, proximal impairments and comorbid cognitive and emotional health problems have been identified, it should be possible to design an intervention that is a good match to their needs.

Sight word training led to significant gains in sight word reading measures, which were larger than gains made from phonics training; phonics training led to statistically significant gains in phonics reading measures, which were larger than gains made from sight word training; and both types of training led to significant gains in general reading that were similar in size. Training phonics before sight words had a slight advantage over the reverse order.

Authors: Genevieve McArthur, Anne Castles, Saskia Kohnen, Linda Larsen, Kristy Jones, Thushara Anandakumar & Erin Banales

Source: McArthur, G., Castles, A., Kohnen, S., Larsen, L., Jones, K., Anandakumar, T. & Banales, E. (2015). Sight word and phonics training in children with dyslexia. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 48(4), 391–407, DOI: 10.1177/0022219413504996

The aims of this study were to a) compare sight word training and phonics training in children with dyslexia and b) determine if different orders of sight word and phonics training have different effects on the reading skills of children with dyslexia. One group of children (n = 36) participated in 8 weeks of phonics training and then 8 weeks of sight word training, one group experienced the reverse (n = 36) and one group took part in phonics and sight word training simultaneously for two 8-week periods (n = 32). Sight word training led to significant gains in sight word reading measures, which were larger than gains made from phonics training; phonics training led to statistically significant gains in phonics reading measures, which were larger than gains made from sight word training; and both types of training led to significant gains in general reading that were similar in size. Training phonics before sight words had a slight advantage over the reverse order.

• Around 5% of children find it unusually difficult to learn to read even though they have had normal reading instruction, they have normal intelligence and they have no known neurological or psychological problems.
• To date, most treatment trials performed with children with dyslexia have looked at the effects of ‘phonics’ reading programmes.
• These programmes teach children to learn to read using the grapheme-phoneme correspondence (GPC) rules (i.e. ‘letter-sound rules’).
• In children with poor reading, phonics training had a moderate and significant effect on reading accuracy for ‘nonwords’ and ‘regular words’, and a small but significant effect on reading mixed words.
• When children first see the word CAT, they have to a) identify the letters, b) translate each grapheme into a speech sound and c) blend these phonemes together into a word that is spoken aloud.
• Once a word has been read a number of times via the phonics route, a memory is formed of the whole word.
• This memory activates the meaning of that word, the spoken representation of that word and the spoken output of that word.
• Together, these components form the ‘sight word’ or ‘lexical’ reading route of the dual route model of reading.
• Phonics reading plays an important role in the development of sight word reading.

The present study

This study had two aims: a) to compare sight word training and phonics training in children with dyslexia and b) to determine if different orders of sight word training and phonics training have different effects on the reading skills of children with dyslexia.

The hypotheses

1. Sight word training will lead to statistically significant gains in sight word reading measures, which will be larger than gains made from phonics training.
2. Phonics training will lead to statistically significant gains in phonics reading measures, which will be larger than gains made from sight word training.
3. Phonics training and sight word training will have similar-sized significant effects on measures of reading that will affect both phonics and sight word reading.

Study design

In Test 1, children aged between 7 and 12 years old completed the screening and outcome measures. After 8 weeks of no training, they returned to perform the outcome measures. The phonics + sight word group (n=36) then did 8 weeks of phonics training (and then Test 3) followed by 8 weeks of sight word training (and then Test 4). The sight word + phonics group (n=36) experienced the same except the order of training was reversed. The mixed + mixed group (n=32) participated in phonics and sight word training on alternate days for 8 weeks (and then Test 3) and then the same again for another 8 weeks (and then Test 4).

Interventions

Sight word training

• Children were asked to take part in five sight word training sessions per week for eight weeks.
• Each training session, which was designed to take 30 min, used one of 30 lists of 24 irregular words that increased in difficulty both between and within lists.
• The sight word training focused on reading accuracy rather than fluency.
• The training was done at home with the support of both a parent and a computer.

Phonics training

• Children and parents were instructed to perform the phonics training at home for 30 min per day, 5 days per week, for 8 weeks.
• All training was done on a computer.
• Training focused on accuracy rather than fluency.

Mixed training

• The mixed training was the same as the phonics and sight word training except that each type of training was performed on alternate days.

Summary

• Sight word training had a significant effect on trained and untrained irregular word reading, and in the case of trained irregular words, this effect was larger than the effect of phonics training.
• Phonics training had a significant effect on nonword reading accuracy and nonword reading fluency.
• These results suggest that it is important to explicitly teach phonics to children with dyslexia because these children appear to learn GPC rules more readily from phonics training than from exposure to sight words.
• Both sight word training and phonics training had significant effects on word reading fluency and reading comprehension.
• An unpredicted finding of this study was that sight word training, even when restricted to irregular words, can produce some benefits to reading via the phonics reading route, suggesting that phonics rules can be deduced implicitly from exposure to sight words to some extent.
• Training order had a significant effect on the untrained irregular word accuracy test.
• The group that experienced phonics training before sight word training saw significantly greater gains than the group who did sight word training and then phonics training.
• The superior effect of training phonics then sight words on untrained irregular words provides some support for the idea that phonics skills help children read unfamiliar words, even when those words are irregular.
• However, there appears to be no general disadvantage (or advantage) for training phonics and sight word reading simultaneously in children with dyslexia.

Implications

• These results, together with previous studies, suggest that relatively pure phonics training delivered via computers for up to 2 hr per week for less than 3 months has moderate to large effects on various reading skills, which reflect small yet reliable gains in children with dyslexia.
• The outcomes of this study support the idea that many children with dyslexia need more than just phonics training.
• Sight word training is particularly important for irregular words.
• Training children to read irregular words will not impair their ability to read via the letter-sound rules.

Maternal language was a significant predictor of storybook exposure but not of direct literacy instruction. Maternal language and phonological skills predicted children’s language and reading/spelling skills, respectively. Direct literacy instruction remained a predictor of children’s reading/spelling skills.

Authors: Marina L. Puglisi, Charles Hulme, Lorna G. Hamilton & Margaret J. Snowling

Source: Puglisi, M.L., Hulme, C., Hamilton, L.G. & Snowling, M.J. (2017). The home literacy environment is a correlate, but perhaps not a cause, of variations in children’s language and literacy development. Scientific Studies of Reading, 21(6), 498–514, DOI: 10.1080/10888438.2017.1346660

The present study investigated whether the home literacy environment predicts children’s reading and language skills once maternal language abilities are taken into account. Longitudinal data were collected during the preschool years for 251 children at high risk of dyslexia. Maternal language was a significant predictor of storybook exposure but not of direct literacy instruction. Maternal language and phonological skills predicted children’s language and reading/spelling skills, respectively. After accounting for variations in maternal language, storybook exposure was not a significant predictor of children’s outcomes. Direct literacy instruction remained a predictor of children’s reading/spelling skills.

• It is well established that the home literacy environment is an important predictor of children’s language and literacy development.
• The home literacy environment usually refers to activities undertaken by family members at home that relate to literacy learning as well as the literacy resources in the home and parental attitudes toward literacy.
• Home literacy environment activities may be formal or informal and active or passive.
• Genetic factors also have an important influence on literacy development.
• The heritability of reading and spelling is estimated to be .73 and .64, respectively, whereas shared environmental influences accounted for only 10% of the variance in reading.
• The correlation between the home literacy environment and children’s literacy skills may be genetically mediated.

The study

Hypotheses

• Measures of maternal language skills will predict the home literacy environment.
• Measures of the home literacy environment will predict children’s language and reading/spelling skills.
• Which measures of the home literacy environment will predict children’s outcomes after controlling for variations in mothers’ language and phonological skills?

The participants were 251 children from the Wellcome Project, and children who were at cognitive risk of developing reading problems later on were overrepresented.

Summary

• Maternal language skills were a significant predictor of storybook exposure but not direct literacy instruction.
• Storybook exposure predicted children’s general language and reading/spelling skills, whereas direct literacy instruction only predicted children’s reading/spelling skills.
• Once mothers’ language and phonological skills were taken into account, storybook exposure was no longer a predictor of children’s language or reading/spelling skills.
• Direct literacy instruction remained a predictor of children’s reading/spelling skills after accounting for variations in maternal language and phonological abilities.

Implications

• The findings suggest that the informal home literacy environment does not directly influence children’s language and reading development.
• The effects of the informal home literacy environment may rather reflect genetic influences; that is, mothers with good language skills pass on genes that confer good language skills. Storybook exposure correlated highly with both maternal language and SES, suggesting that maternal education, rather than maternal genes, is also a plausible driver of the effects.
• The effects of direct literacy instruction in the home on children’s early mastery of the mechanics of reading and spelling do appear to reflect environmental influences, although the influence is weak.
• The findings thus suggest that it is not solely the amount of literacy activity a child is exposed to that determines his or her early language and literacy development; it is also the linguistic ability of the parent who is providing the literacy environment at home.
• If the relationship between the informal home literacy environment and child language and reading/spelling outcomes reflects the effects of ge correlations, this does not mean that interventions to improve or enrich the home literacy environment will not be effective in promoting children’s language and reading development.